By Dale King Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the 2004 comedy musical based on the 1988 film of the same name that featured Michael Caine and Steve Martin as a couple of swindlers trolling the Riviera looking to fleece rich women, has a wonderful musical score. But for the sake of the pun, the creators of the show should have included one more tune – one called “Send in the … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2018
Actor Colombel preps cabaret show, ‘Pardon My French!’, for LW Playhouse
Remember Tangi Colombel, the puckish, bald French performer whose American debut at Palm Beach Dramaworks 14 years ago in the Carbonell Award-winning musical, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, that also earned him a Curtain Up Award as Outstanding New Performer? It turns out he is alive and well and living in Palm Beach Gardens, having forged a … [Read more...]
‘Indecent’ opens Dramaworks season in powerful style
“Indecent” is both the title of Paula Vogel’s impressionistic chronicle of a 1907 melodrama by novice playwright Sholem Asch, as well as the critical and legal opinion of the work once it arrived on Broadway in the early 1920s. While Vogel’s play serves as a production history of Asch’s God of Vengeance, it is also much more – a portrait of survival of a piece of … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire takes radiant journey of faith, with help of ABQ
There are many roads to God, as biblical tradition would have it, and during the Middle Ages, one of the most important literal paths to Christian devotion, as well as papal indulgence, was the road to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. It’s still a pilgrimage people take (including an American cellist, Dane Johansen, who traveled the 600-mile road in 2014 and … [Read more...]
Community theater: DB Playhouse opens with sharp Christie whodunit
By Dale King Soon after summer departed South Florida, a strange sensation of mystery enveloped the area of Delray Beach at the far end of Lake Ida, in the vicinity of the Delray Beach Playhouse. It doesn’t take a Miss Marple, a Hercule Poirot or even a Sherlock Holmes to realize this sensation must be emanating from the showplace itself, where the 2018-2019 season opened … [Read more...]
‘The Oath’: Amid screwball plot, a chilling premise
The Oath is like a George A. Romero film without the zombies — at least not the literal zombies. Put another way, it’s 1984 for 2018, a cautionary tale for a totalitarian future that casts a penetrating gaze at our proto-fascist present. Whatever your literary-cinematic reference point, comedian Ike Barinholtz’s directorial debut is easily the most confrontational, … [Read more...]
‘The Guilty’: One man, one room and the voices inside his head
For most of us who have had the misfortune of calling an emergency dispatch line, the voice on the other end will remain a disembodied presence — a blurry connection in the ether of a crisis. The person’s physical appearance and backstory are immaterial, their relationships to the callers fleeting and impersonal. Part of the genius of The Guilty, the debut feature from … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2018-19: Classical music
It shouldn’t be surprising at this point, given South Florida’s deep connection to the Northeast, and New York City in particular, but this area can boast a season of classical music as rich as most other cities in the country, particularly in the first months of the year, when everyone likes to come to Florida to escape winter. Here’s a monthly look at what you can look … [Read more...]
‘First Man’: An epic flight, grounded in gritty character
As a rule, I try not to pay much attention to the snap polling conducted at the end of advance screenings. But the audience’s tepid response to this week’s preview of First Man was too telling to ignore. The universal round of applause did not greet the final credits, and most of the praise offered at egress was muted and lukewarm. “It was too long” seemed to be the … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2018-19: Palm Beach art
By Sandra Schulman After an unusually hot summer, the cooler temps and invigorating new art season are more than welcome. The art offerings are heavy on photographs and Florida history with glamour shots in the spotlight at the Flagler Museum, and Sunshine State history at the Boca Raton Museum. Former President Bush makes a Florida art show bow with portraits of the … [Read more...]